


Sea Change

by Twitchiest



Series: Apocalypse Girl [8]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Implied F/M, Loneliness, Mental Health Issues, Polyamory, not actually dark my god what is this series coming to
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-06
Updated: 2015-09-06
Packaged: 2018-04-19 10:38:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4743218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Twitchiest/pseuds/Twitchiest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a ghost in her town.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sea Change

_**One** _

There is a ghost in her town.  
  
It's a woman, neither young nor old, with dusky-dark skin far lighter than her own. She came with a group of others, a camp of forty and others coming and going, carts covered in bright blue material.  
  
Siti peers over a crumbling balcony at the camp. They're carrying crates through the town, wooden, and stack them up high and tie the blue material tight on top of them.  
  
It's none of her business. But she's quiet and nobody ever notices her. They'll leave soon and her town will be empty and safe again.  
**  
** _**Two**_  
  
Her town sits on the cliffs.  
  
She climbs down them and fishes perched on a large rock, with a net on a stick, slow and patient. She collects seaweed, and edible plants from the cliff edges and gardens, like she'd been taught once.  
  
Storms blow in all sorts of things that collect between the rocky headlands. She's found entire ships there, blown in one tide and destroyed in the next.  
  
She knows every part. It doesn't take long to realise they're taking all the books in the library on the biggest headland, the one that's got a great big arch.  
  
_**Three**_  
  
It's all right, she thinks. She wasn't attached to the library. She has the books she wants in her sleeping place.  
  
The ghost worries her.  
  
All spring it spends walking around her town, looking at it. It stands on the cliffs and finds her paths down to the rocky beach. It drinks from the spring, where the others built a dam to make a pool.  
  
She doesn't like it. Not even a little. Strangers don't matter when they just take things. This ghost makes her town new, and strange, puts darkness in the shadows and monsters in the emply places.  
  
_**Four**_  
  
Siti doesn't like the cliffs.  
  
She came here seven winters ago, has been alone here three, and every year the cliff-faces shiver and shake and collapse a little. The sea batters them, hard and angry, and every year she has to find a new path down.  
  
When she sees the ghost staring into a rock pool in the moonlight, body-lengths from foaming waves, Siti thinks she likes them even less. She cannot scramble up, from here.  
  
The ghost turns her head and stares at her, unblinking. Siti stands still. When the ghost turns away she bolts, deer-fast over damp rocks.  
  
_**Five**_  
  
The ghost is waiting for her the next day, so Siti veers away and doesn't fish. Nor the next. She sits far away and watches the ghost being still and quiet.  
  
On the fifth, maybe sixth, day, the ghost brings food, and sets down a portion far away from her. Siti creeps close enough to snatch it, and runs further across the rocky beach to eat. She hasn't tasted fresh bread in years.  
  
The ghost eats with her, and watches her. Hunter. Siti is prey. It's dangerous to stay close to a predator, but this one doesn't move an inch.  
  
_**Six**_  
  
The ghost watches her fish. The day after she hooks her own net on a stick and mimics it. She falls into the sea. Siti tries not to lean in waiting for the ghost to come back up, and when she does, wide-eyed and coughing, net tight between her fingers, Siti doesn't show her relief.  
  
The ghost swims to shore and takes off most of her clothes. Siti averts her gaze, but it keeps being drawn back to that shameless, sodden figure, lying on a dry rock next to her shirt and trousers, staring at the sky with a smile.  
  
_**Seven**_  
  
Siti makes sure to demonstrate especially slowly, next time. She doesn't know why. She doesn't need to keep the ghost here.  
  
The ghost catches a small spiny fish. She dances on her fishing-perch in celebration and falls in again. This time she laughs when she surfaces, treading water, and Siti smiles for a moment before she hides it.  
  
Ghost clambers back on the perch, soaked to the bone. Siti spends so much time staring at her, clothes drawn wet over her skin, that she doesn't catch a single fish.  
  
Ghost catches three, and she shares them over a rough campfire.  
  
_**Eight**_  
  
Siti follows the ghost's steps through the town to reclaim it. Not all. Enough for the town to feel familiar against her skin. She tests the edges, but doesn't take one step over the boundary. She visits almost every old shop and house, scrambling into the heart of ruins amidst sun-bleached bones.  
  
She does not dare the buildings near the library.  
  
It's bad enough that they see her sometimes, and look. None of them look like him, but she can't be sure, so she stays high and far and away, where none of them can see and know her face.  
  
_**Nine**_  
  
The strangers work faster in summer heat. The library's nearly half empty. Siti wonders where the constant flow of carts is coming from. There's no people around for miles and miles.  
  
Once, though, she sees them making carts, out of rusted metal and stacks of wooden wheels they must have brought with them. They're not stable.  
  
After that, Siti just wonders where all the donkeys are coming from. There are so many, staked out along the edge of the town, coming and going, in browns and blacks and white-tipped reds. Her people never had so many animals in one place.  
  
_**Ten**_  
  
The ghost lures her into the camp. She goes walking and Siti follows, worried about the shadows, and doesn't pay attention to where they are until she sees the cooking-fire.  
  
She hesitates, but it's too late. She's already surrounded, curious eyes from all. The ghost goes to the fire and picks up two bowls, and receives spoonfuls of something liquid, and brings them back.  
  
"It's just rabbit and deer," Ghost says. It's the first thing she's said. Her voice is smooth.  
  
Siti reaches out and takes it and then she backs away, out, walks into darkness and shakes and eats.  
  
_**Eleven**_  
  
The donkeys are well-fed and soft to touch. Ghost shows her the best places to scratch them.  
  
There's no one else around in the soft flush of sunset, when Ghost demonstrates how to groom them, brushing through their clipped coats with special brushes. Siti helps her work through the line in the night. None of them kick or bite. They lean into her when she strokes their long faces.  
  
There are dogs here, too. Siti likes them less. They're barely taller than her knee and a mix of wire and muscle, and they're calm because Ghost is next to her.  
**  
** _**Twelve**_  
  
More strangers come. These ones are in boats. They stay in Siti's fishing place. Siti stays up on the cliff, even when Ghost goes down there and waits for her. After a couple nights, Ghost swims to one, climbs aboard, and even up here Siti can hear that she's shouting.  
  
The boats move around the library headland. They stay there. Siti dares the path down and fishes again, and when the ghost comes back she sits on the perch next to Siti and stares out to sea.  
  
"Do you ever wonder what they're doing, across there?" the ghost says, soft.  
  
_**Thirteen**_  
  
Siti must have cut herself on a sharp rock and not noticed. When she gets back to her shelter, a stone-built little hut far from the cliff edge, she sees it then, the dried blood down her leg.  
  
She washes it in water and wraps it in cloth, and washes it again in the sea when she goes back. It hurts, but it's good for her.  
  
It's exhausting, climbing the cliff path with two small fish in her net. The ghost didn't come tonight. Siti shouldn't feel sad about that. The ghost isn't her friend. She doesn't owe it anything.  
  
_**Fourteen**_  
  
Her head hurts.  
  
She stumbles out of shelter for water, then crawls back in and curls up. She's cold, shaking, and her head won't stop hurting. It blurs the world, stretches time out. She sleeps, sometimes, and wakes, and sometimes it's bright and sometimes dark.  
  
The ghost comes back, voice quiet, wraps her in blankets and makes her do things. Tells her stories that haunt her. Siti watches her set up a small radio in the corner, threading wire outside and onto the roof. The crackle melts into her dreams along with the soft murmur of Ghost talking to strangers.  
  
_**Fifteen**_  
  
When Siti's head clears she's weak, trembling like a newborn deer. Ghost helps her up and makes her walk, and eat, and drink, until she's stable on her feet, if still so easily tired. There's no going down the cliff, but not because she's weak. There was a storm whilst she shivered, feverish, and part of the cliff collapsed again. The arch under the library is taller and wider.  
  
Ghost moves around and away from her, but she stays close, until one night she doesn't come back at all, and this time Siti cries hot tears into her worn blankets.  
**  
** _**Sixteen**_  
  
The ghost is there when she wakes.  
  
Siti recoils until her back is against the wall. Ghost doesn't move, sits there, curled in on herself.  
  
Ghost taps her ear, face questioning.  
  
Siti shakes her head and pulls at her everpresent scarf.  
  
Ghost rocks back on her heels. "You're strong," she says. "That's good." She stares at Siti, then around. "Surviving on the edge," she says. "Someone only does that if they don't want to be part of a community. Or they can't."  
  
Siti curls up tight, mirrors the ghost, and buries her head against her arms until Ghost goes away.  
  
_**Seventeen**_  
  
The ghost brings her new clothes, and shoes, and soap so she can wash properly. The clothes are warm in autumn chill.  
  
"You're beautiful," Ghost tells her, cutting her long hair a little shorter. She braids it damp, tight, ties it back. "You already knew that."  
  
Siti waits until she's done, then turns to kiss her. Cautious. Delicate. Ghost breaks away first. Siti flinches.  
  
"I'm sorry," the ghost says. "I'm spoken for."  
  
Siti scrambles back, scarlet red.  
  
"I have to check with him first," Ghost says, reaching for her radio. "If you don't mind sharing me," she adds, eyes crinkling.  
  
_**Eighteen**_  
  
Nightmares shake Siti awake.  
  
Ghost is warm and soft under rough woollen blankets. She's running her hand over Siti's arm, humming a tune. Siti curls into her and lays still, breathes.  
  
Safety is a lie. They were safe. He was. She can only be safe if she's alone in her familiar old town.  
  
Safe is here, too. She doesn't understand why.  
  
The ghost starts singing, soft, words Siti can barely make out. She knows she's falling asleep again. She needs to be awake to be safe.  
  
There's a word for what this is. Siti reaches for it. It slips away.  
  
_**Nineteen**_  
  
Siti finds her, days later, outside the library.  
  
"Your town's going to fall into the sea," the ghost says. "This year or another. Soon. The library is old and leaking and none of this rock is stable. That's why we're rescuing it. All these books are going east. There's going to be a new library there."  
  
Siti is silent because there is nothing else she can do. The ghost reaches out and takes her hand, slow, wraps the one between two, comforting.  
  
"Like everything else," Ghost says. "We keep the beautiful and rare and precious, and we leave the rest."  
  
**Twenty**  
  
Siti isn't sure why she lets Ghost pack up her things. It aches, to leave. Ghost lets her sit up on top of the cart and watch her town disappear behind her.  
  
Ghost sits next to her. She's reading a book.  
  
"It's called sign language," she says. "We can use it to talk. See?" She forms shapes with her hands.  
  
Siti shrugs.  
  
"It's my name," Ghost says. "Bay."  
  
Bays are water, too, shelters from the sea, sweeping and gentle.  
  
"Let me do yours," Ghost says.  
  
Siti leans over and writes her name into Ghost's hands, one letter at a time.


End file.
